Quantification of porcine vocal fold geometry in three dimensions
Kimberly A. Stevens, Marie E. Jetté, Susan L. Thibeault, Scott L. Thomson · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2013
The geometry of the vocal folds, including the internal spatial distribution of the various tissue types, plays a central role in governing vocal fold flow-induced vibration. Quantifying the tissue geometries is therefore important for voice production research. In this presentation, quantitative measures of porcine vocal fold geometry obtained using three different techniques are reported and compared. MicroCT scans of three fresh porcine larynges were obtained with the folds in abducted and adducted positions. Adducted larynges were frozen, rescanned, cut in the midsagittal plane, and rescanned while frozen. The larynges were then thawed and the vocal folds were dissected. One vocal fold was frozen in optimal cutting temperature medium, serial-sectioned in the coronal plane, and imaged, and the other vocal fold was fixed in 10% formalin and embedded in paraffin before being sectioned and imaged. Geometrical data was obtained and compared between the different sets of histological images and the microCT images. This study provides quantitative measures of porcine vocal fold geometry and characterizes the influence of formalin fixation and histological processing on tissue deformation tissue across the three-dimensional vocal fold, leading the way for similar studies using human vocal folds.